Why did Orlanth and his worshippers become so different?

[Knight]

Orlanthi were portrayed as Western. Now it looks like they're praxians. To top it off, Orlanth has dark hair and a purple body when he used to have bright white hair.

At least Elmal seems to have a consistent design.

Why the change in appearances?

[Merlkir]

It's an entirely different age of the world, these are not the same Orlanthi.
And the appearance of gods usually reflects that of their worshippers.

[Knight]

Originally posted by Merlkir:

It's an entirely different age of the world, these are not the same Orlanthi.
And the appearance of gods usually reflects that of their worshippers.

Which age does Kodp take place in and which age does this game take place in?

[Detahramet]

Originally posted by Knight:

Originally posted by Merlkir:

It's an entirely different age of the world, these are not the same Orlanthi.
And the appearance of gods usually reflects that of their worshippers.

Which age does Kodp take place in and which age does this game take place in?

Six Ages takes place as the very beginning of The Storm Ages, wheras KoDP takes place around a thousand years and some change after The Age of Darkness, the world changing apocalyptic event that ends up fundementally changing the cultures of the Orlanthis.

I would also like to note that very likely the appearances aren't quite literally, what with them being Gods and all, so very likely it's been filtered somewhat through the local culture's interpretation of those gods.

[lyreofsheliak]

Six Ages: Ride Like the Win takes place in the Storm Age. King of Dragon Pass takes place in the Third or Modern Age, which is over a thousand years later. (Numbers might be a bit fuzzy, since some stuff happens to the nature of time in between.) In between are the Great Darkness, the First/Dawn Age, and the Second/Imperial Age. (I think. Some ages have multiple names and some cultures break them up differently. But it's been a long time and some really weird stuff has happened!)

We're also in a different region—I think by the time of King of Dragon Pass our valley is actually part of the Lunar Empire. (The Orlanthi we see here might be more distant aunts and uncles to the KODP ones than ancestors as such.)

(And out-of-universe, I think the way the Orlanthi and their gods have been depicted has changed a lot—Merlkir would know a lot more about that than I do, but the tabletop game materials do usually make Orlanth blue these days, and when KODP came out I don't believe that was the case.)

[Knight]

Interesting and fair points made. Another thing I noticed was elves look like tree people as opposed to elf/plant hybrids like they did in the previous games.

[Merlkir]

There are many different kinds of elves. The more human-like dryads are (if I remember correctly) grown like that for interactions with humans.
See some variety here: https://www.deviantart.com/merlkir/art/GtG-11-Elves-447047123

[Knight]

Originally posted by Merlkir:

There are many different kinds of elves. The more human-like dryads are (if I remember correctly) grown like that for interactions with humans.
See some variety here: https://www.deviantart.com/merlkir/art/GtG-11-Elves-447047123

Oh wow. Thanks for the posts guys.

[f2p cart pusher]

any orlanthi between vingkotling to heortlings are supposed to look liek that in the lore (guide to glorantha)

olive skinned but diverging hair colors ranging from blond, to black, to red. it's the dara happans/riders/grazers/lunars/pentans/berennethelli who were supposed to look like real-world caucasian which is why you're playing throatsinging horselords who look your typical guy working in the mailroom

[Odeum]

In addition to what everyone has said, the canon has actually changed. At the time dragon pass was released, the orlanthi were depicted as similar to vikings. That was a long time ago, though. The original creator(whose name slips my mind atm) changed his mind about it.
This kind of thing is normal. Tolkien fiddled a lot with his works too.

[david]

Yes, Greg Stafford approved all the King of Dragon Pass art. But the Orlanth-worshipers in this game aren’t at all the same people as those you play in KoDP.

[moonlite]

It's the same way for Elmal, he's blonde in this game and black-haired in KoDP.

Originally posted by Detahramet:

Six Ages takes place as the very beginning of The Storm Ages, wheras KoDP takes place around a thousand years and some change after The Age of Darkness, the world changing apocalyptic event that ends up fundementally changing the cultures of the Orlanthis.

Weird. Thanks for the explanation!

[benwaggoner]

Originally posted by Odeum:

In addition to what everyone has said, the canon has actually changed. At the time dragon pass was released, the orlanthi were depicted as similar to vikings. That was a long time ago, though. The original creator(whose name slips my mind atm) changed his mind about it.
This kind of thing is normal. Tolkien fiddled a lot with his works too.

The late Greg Stafford was the creator of Glorantha, with tons of later contributions from others.

Since the mid 80's there's been a strong trend away from Gloranthan cultures having specific Earth historical culture/ethnic analogs to a lot more nuance and complexity. When I first bought RuneQuest circa 1982, my middle-school mind put it all in a Lunar=Roman Empire and Sartarite=Barbarians frame, which the art suggested.

[Odeum]

Originally posted by benwaggoner:

Originally posted by Odeum:

In addition to what everyone has said, the canon has actually changed. At the time dragon pass was released, the orlanthi were depicted as similar to vikings. That was a long time ago, though. The original creator(whose name slips my mind atm) changed his mind about it.
This kind of thing is normal. Tolkien fiddled a lot with his works too.

The late Greg Stafford was the creator of Glorantha, with tons of later contributions from others.

Since the mid 80's there's been a strong trend away from Gloranthan cultures having specific Earth historical culture/ethnic analogs to a lot more nuance and complexity. When I first bought RuneQuest circa 1982, my middle-school mind put it all in a Lunar=Roman Empire and Sartarite=Barbarians frame, which the art suggested.

Indeed.
As I was saying, for large, lore-rich settings like this, it is far from unusual for them to have changed over time as the creators get more comfortable exploring their more unusual ideas.

[PAUL TURBO]

I read on the BRPS forums that at the time KoDP, the creators of glorantha weren't sure if the worshippers of orlanth would look like northern europeans or mediterranean people. Since then they settled on making them look like mediterraneans